Election Night

Greetings all - Effective July 1st, 2009, Bolton Banter will have a new executive.  At our meeting on May 7th, at which we had quorum, the membership elected the following slate of officers to serve during the 2009/2010 term:

President - Carol Dowell

Vice President Education - Laurie Stapleton

Vice President Public Relations - Corina Simu

Vice President Membership - Bondy Nair

Secretary - Lesley Webb

Treasurer - Eric Solowka

Sargeant at Arms - Ben Allison

Congratulations to all and a big "thank you" to the current executive who worked diligently throughout this past year on behalf of the club. 

The theme of the meeting was, fittingly, "election night".  A good meeting was made even better because we able to introduce our newest member, Heather Taylor-Nanan and say welcome to Hendrik, a returning guest from Caledon Village. 

Table Topics Master Laurie Stapleton, in an ingenious blending of work and pleasure, brought from her workplace some Dove chocolates.  These tasty morsels contain messages within their wrappings.  The task was to fashion a mini speech from the messages.  Jim DeCarolis rose to the challenge of creating a short speech from "a push up bra is not cheating".  There were other great messages such as, "pack more than you need" and "buy yourself flowers". 

Tom Wildfang, a very new member, delivered his icebreaker, "So this is me, so far".  Tom spoke of life lessons learned during his fifteen years as a Boy Scout.  Lorraine Van Wagner, speaking from an advanced manual, spoke about promoting Bolton Banter in a project entitled, "Handling Challenging Situations".  These situations included dealing with interruptions from bratty Terence Canastraro and chatty Laurie Stapleton.  Both played their roles to perfection, as did Eric Solowka, who role played the silent one; an unusual role for Eric as I'm sure you'll agree. 

Lesley Webb, in her second speech from the CC manual, challenged widely held beliefs in her presentation, "An Inconvenient Truth??". Lesley backed up her assertion that global warming is a fraud and in some cases, a tax grab, e.g. the carbon tax. 

Catherine Keyes, presenting her fourth speech from the CC manual, "If Ignorance is the Cancer then Knowledge is the Cure", offered a range of information about the many different departments that comprise a medical laboratory.  Now we know why it can sometimes take so many specialists to make a diagnosis. 

Carol presented a motion to alter the usual meeting format for the June 4th meeting.  There will be three mini meetings so that people will have an increased opportunity to assume and learn about club roles, e.g. Chair, Toastmaster etc. 

A highly entertaining meeting concluded with the awarding of ribbons.  Tom Wildfang's ice breaker won him the ribbon as best speaker.  Dan O'Reilly and Brendan Dineen tied for best table topic.  JIm DeCarolis and Eric Solowka tied for best evaluator. 

Thanks to all for a great meeting.  I'd like to take this opportunity to update you on our April 30th meeting.  It was the fifth Thursday of the month and therefore, education night.  Eric Solowka presented his workshop " I Connect", designed to help people become more comfortable with eye contact.  Eye contact is critical in connecting with audiences but its application isn't limited to speech making in Toastmasters Clubs.  Your webmaster recently spent a day in a negotiating workshop.  The presenter started the day by stressing the need to start any negotiation with a smile, a firm handshake and, you guessed it, eye contact!  It does make a difference.

See you all at our next meeting, May 21st.  Cheers and regards - Lorraine Van Wagner, Webmaster